Evening Primrose and Showy Milkweed in a Yosemite Valley Meadow on 7.5.24
The Evening Primrose was almost wiped out in Yosemite Valley as they used to mow the meadows but this year there are thousands putting on a show if you get up early enough.
“It is that time of year again! Yosemite Valley meadows are in bloom and the showy milkweed plants are living up to their names. The showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa), native to western North America, is both a home to the milkweed beetle and a vacation layover for the monarch butterfly. This flowering plant is a hairy, erect perennial. The large, pointed, banana-like leaves are arranged opposite on the stalk-like stem. The eye-catching furry pale pink to pinkish-purple flowers are arranged in thick umbels. Their corollas are reflexed and the central flower parts, five hoods with prominent hooks, are star-shaped. The fruit is a large, rough follicle filled with many flat oval seeds with luxuriant silky plumes. The fruit is something from another world, and soon it will open its alien pods to cotton-like seeds that will disperse on the wind. “
“Flowers of Yosemite National Park
Handbook of Yosemite National Park (1921) by Willis Linn Jepson
One of the remarkable sights of the upper reaches of the Valley in midsummer are the fields of tall yellow Evening Primroses (Oenothera biennis). They have very handsome large golden flowers which open at twilight and close again in the middle of the following day. In favorable seasons the dry open fields about Yosemite are often yellow with these stately plants. Many of the finest groups, however, are now a thing of the past, due to the mowing of the meadows for wild hay.
In dry spots near the Yosemite Black Oaks, the Showy Milkweed – Sierra Milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) develops its bunches of highly specialized pink or reddish-purple flowers above its white hoary leaves and is a most interesting plant on account of its habit of catching and imprisoning flies.“